Page:The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (Volume Three).djvu/255

 stretch of woods over a horrible road. Our vehicle had been a gorgeous family coach once, with satin-covered cushions, from which now the horse-hair protruded in hideous abundance; the springs in so enfeebled a condition, that every unevenness of the road caused a bump lifting us out of our seats, and the harness,—the “old rig” as our driver called it—snapping so frequently and in so vicious a manner as to defy to the utmost not only our endurance, but also our skill in making temporary repairs. Fortunately noticing before starting that the lanterns of the carriage were lacking, we had provided ourselves at the last station with a supply of tallow candles, and now, making our way slowly through the dense darkness of the woods, one of us, either myself or my companion, Captain Orlemann, alternately, would stumble, a burning tallow candle in hand, ahead of the horses to discover stumps, or boulders, or holes in the road and thus to prevent a total shipwreck. Meantime, our driver, a white boy of sixteen or seventeen, with difficulty maintaining himself on the box, would in the intervals between violent fits of swearing, persistently describe to us what a magnificent affair he had known this carriage to be, and how rich and elegant the people had been who had owned it, but who were now so poor that they had to hire it out as a livery hack, and had not enough money to keep it in repair.

Such journeys were fatiguing indeed, but they were hardly worse than the sweltering nights in the wretched country taverns of those days—nights spent in desperate fights with ravenous swarms of mosquitoes, if not, in addition, with insects still more offensive. Indeed, the comforts of many a military camp during the war had been genuine luxury compared with the accommodations offered by most of those hostelries. The upshot of it was that when I arrived at New Orleans, the limits of my endurance were well-nigh reached, and